New UCC video transports viewers to ‘Hogwarts of Ireland’

March 23, 2017

University College Cork in Ireland has released a new video focused on the many connections between its campus and Hogwarts from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, clocking up thousands of views online since this afternoon.

Viewers are urged to ‘depart from Platform 9 3/4 at 11a.m. sharp on the #Hogwarts Express to UCC…’, referencing where young wizards travel from at King’s Cross station in London to reach the British wizarding school, located in the Highlands of Scotland.

In the wildly popular Harry Potter series, after students have arrived at the school via the Hogwarts Express, first years are assigned to one of its four Houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin at the Sorting Ceremony.

Filmed by New York Film Academy-trained cinematographer and UCC alum Jason A. Keane, the video features the UCC Harry Potter Society and its popular Sorting Ceremony at the Aula Maxima (Great Hall).

Kelly Coyle, Chairperson of the UCC Harry Potter Society, said: “When I first started in UCC, and I’m sure everyone else has the same experience, I could not deny its similarities to Hogwarts. Our generation grew up with Harry Potter and dreamed of receiving the acceptance letter to Hogwarts and so as a Society we aim to recreate events that would have taken place had we actually gone to Hogwarts, such as the Sorting Ceremony and our annual Yule Ball.”

“The Society has been a huge part of my life for the last two years and to be able to recreate the Hogwarts experience for UCC students is a ‘magical’ experience to say the least. UCC looks like Hogwarts; people do consider it the Hogwarts of Ireland.”Photos by Emmet Curtin – photoemmet@gmail.com.

JP Quinn, Head of UCC Visitors’ Centre, commented: “When expanding my school tour programme, the ‘Junior Conferring Tour’, “my love of all things Harry Potter was never far from my mind. In recent years, when I have met groups I have always tried to speak as If we existed within the ‘Potterverse’.

“The children are delighted with the comparisons between Hogwarts and UCC. The majestic limestone Quad echoes the spirit and the halls of Hogwarts. The four Colleges in UCC are not unlike the four Houses in the stories. And what better example of similarities do you need than the Rogue Gallery of Portraits of previous presidents, not at all unlike the Headmaster portraits in Hogwarts.”

According to Quinn, the Ogham Stones Collection at UCC, also featured in the video, “echo the mysticism of The Philosopher’s Stone” from the first novel in the Harry Potter series, while Ben Reilly’s steel sculpture ‘Burghers’, located in the North Wing of the Quad, could be mistaken for a dangerous group of Dementors, the gliding dark creatures from Harry Potter often referred to as “soul-sucking fiends.”

“It’s fun for the 7000 children coming through on our tours every year, but also for myself, as I’m constantly looking out for examples of magic on our beautiful campus,” he added.